The EU's global strategic partner(ship): a tool for the maturation of European foreign policy?

The EU has been confronted with novel global challenges ranging from economic, migration and security related crises, to an interstate war on its Eastern and Southern borders. Strategic partnerships have emerged as one of the key potential instruments to navigate these challenges, yet with contested debates over their impact on the EU's global standing as a foreign policy actor. This paper analyses how, if at all, EU strategic partnerships indicate a maturation of EU foreign policy in the global context. We argue that the utilisation of EU strategic partners emerges as an area with varied degrees of maturation. We identify three main indicators of these varied maturation degrees to assess the EU's use of strategic partnerships. First, we focus on the rationale behind the continuous tension between the EU's normative and strategic drivers for engaging in strategic partnerships. The second indicator of maturation is the EU's proactive role in adapting to its changing global environment, where a mature EU identifies other global players and presents them with cooperation opportunities. Finally, institutional maturity as a function of vertical coherence implies the proactive management of divisions among the EU institutions and member states over the modalities of these partnerships.